I present Danny and the Demoncycle for your reading pleasure (and safety education!). Authored by the VA Department of Highway Safety and circulated in elementary schools in 1972. Click the link for a scan of the whole comic (during which you’ll see Satan Santa bring Danny the Demoncycle!)
I think I understand where this is coming from:
Dominion Power is a big-time corporate bad actor (with big-time money to burn) influencing government policy to its own benefit, but NOT to everyone else’s (certainly not to the environment’s benefit, that’s for sure). [ . . . ] Dominion Power is pretty much the worst of the worst.
[ . . . ]
That’s why I’m challenging all Virginia 2009 candidates to “just say no” to Dominion’s dirty money. Refuse it. Reject it. Return it. Just don’t take any money from Dominion Power.
Sure, except it’s completely counter-productive to the end of putting better candidates in office. Okay, Dominion’s a bad actor that spreads lots of money around Virginia politics.  It’s also one of, if not the, biggest company in Virginia outside of the DC area. That, right there, is the reason that you can be sure that it will always be a force in Virginia politics.  Fine, it’s nice to imagine a public sphere in which every local candidate is funded solely by thousands of small dollar donors, but when you have more people voting on American Idol than contributing to local races, I think that’s safely labeled a fantasy.   So, starting from that (rather safe) premise, my advice to candidates is to take Dominion’s money and run. Run for office on their dime, and vote in favor of your constituent’s interests anyway.  It’s just silly for a candidate to disadvantage themselves (because Dominion money will end up in any race) by refusing contributions from Dominion. If a candidate has the strength of conviction enough to refuse Dominion contributions, then he or she has enough strength of conviction to take the contribution and do the right thing anyway.
Go on, take the money and run.
Yesterday, I was asking for bets on when Del. Mark Obenshain was going to trot out the same ridiculous excuse Del. John Cosgrove did when he tried to criminalize miscarriages with an almost identical bill. Â In an email to me in January 2005, Del. Cosgrove claimed:
This bill, which was requested by the Chesapeake Police Department, is an attempt to reduce the number of “trashcan†babies that are born and then abandoned in trashcans, toilets, or elsewhere to die from exposure or worse. There are numerous examples of these tragic deaths in Virginia, many in Northern Virginia and also in Hampton Roads. Once the body of a child is found, if the death of that child is undetermined by a coroner, the person abandoning that child can only be charged with “the improper disposal of a human body.
And yep, that’s exactly Del. Obenshain’s story, as he left it in comments at Waldo Jaquith’s site:
I have heard from people across the Commonwealth about S.B. 962, and I appreciate the comments of those who have weighed in here and elsewhere. This legislation was drafted at the request of the Commonwealth Attorney for Rockingham County in response to a specific law enforcement issue.
[ . . . ]
Let me tell you what motivated the bill. In the autumn of 2007, a student at Bridgewater College admitted to giving birth and subsequently disposing of the child’s remains in a trash bin. The body was then transported to the landfill and never recovered, so it is impossible to know whether the child was stillborn or born alive. In the course of the investigation that followed, the Commonwealth Attorney’s office discovered that, under current law, there are no direct prohibitions on disposing of fetal remains. Had the student in question not disposed of the remains on private property not her own, no charges whatsoever would have been possible.
Del. Obenshain then claims that he never intended that the bill would have such a wide reach, and pledges to fix it (remember, this is almost the exact same bill that brought national ridicule on Del. Cosgrove). Frankly, I don’t believe Obenshain at all. This is akin to drafting a bill outlawing the driving of any car you didn’t buy yourself, and claiming that it is aimed at reducing car theft. This was a political stunt, and a pretty appalling one, at that.
Code at BC brings us word that Del. Al Eisenberg had decided that he won’t be running for re-election this fall. Del. Eisenberg has certainly earned the right to take a break. He’s been in elected public service to Arlington over 25 years.
While I’m somewhat disappointed in that this means there will be no Ashton Heights Smackdown in the primary, a wide open primary sounds like a lot of fun.
Roughly two million people showed up to see the inauguration of Barack Obama on Tuesday, and there are almost as many stories out there about that. My own is of an easy and wonderful day – we biked down around 8:30, huddled like penguins trying to stay warm for a few hours, experienced the joy of turning the page on a dark chapter of American history with a couple million people, and rode home after.  Pictures here, if you like.
I also want to share the story of a friend who traveled in from out in Loudoun County, Virginia. While she had to go through a lot more trouble than me to join everyone on the Mall, it sounds like she had a fantastic time, too:
The MARC train experience was excellent-  we left my house at 7:30 and drove to the bridge over the Potomac at Point of Rocks station- parked the car in a near empty parking lot and got aboard the train. While on the train waiting on the car with the bathroom, I met people from Ohio, Washington state, Massachusetts, and Atlanta. Everyone was so excited. There was a man with his 10 month old daughter heading down.  I hope she was warm enough. We met a man, Doug from Frederick, traveling alone and George and I adopted him to walk with us to the Mall.
We got into Union Station right before 10 AM and it took us 1.5 hours to walk (slog) over and finally find a place to enter the Mall at the Washington Monument. We had to navigate the street closings near the Capital and try to get from D and other streets back to Independence Ave. I have never seen so many people in my life on the streets to “Mecca” but everyone was very polite and cooperative.  We lost our new friend Doug in the massive crowd. I held George’s hand the whole time so we would not be separated, it was that crowded around us.
On the way over, we saw the lines of people with orange tickets snaking for blocks and wondered how many of them actually got through in time to get on the Mall.  I heard stories about many blue and purple ticket holders not getting in. Honestly, I never thought we would make it in time but we finally got on the Mall at 11:30. There were still so many people on the street trying to get to the Mall on time. Just amazing.
The jumbotron was not that close, but we could still see it and just decided to stay put as the ceremony was about to start. When Bush was shown on the screen there was massive booing all over the Mall – that many people booing was truly amazing. (I was one of them). There were some kids by us who got separated from their dad and a woman was going to help take them to the “lost and found”. There was no clapping nor booing for Rick Warren where I was – just indifference.
I loved being on the Mall when Obama was sworn in. I will never forget it and the crowd going nuts. Even with all those people, It was very quiet during his speech – all listened intently.  After his speech many people left. The wind started to pick up after that and it got really cold by the Washington Monument. Massive amounts of newspaper pieces were blowing everywhere. (Obama should have ordered everyone on the Mall to pick up the trash next to them as part of their first assignment to support the country)  We had no problem finding an empty porta-potty. Due to the fact it took us so long to get to the Mall, we decided to start heading back to Union Station even though our train was not until 5:30.
Again the crowds heading back were just astonishing. The line to get to the L’Enfant Metro station was blocks long. There were an amazing amount of lost gloves and scarves on the street along with a child’s boot that must have slipped off. Parked tour buses lined the streets everywhere.  Pedestrians ruled - Metro buses trying to get around were trapped at intersections with no cops to help them. What was most inspiring to me were all the elderly black women who were bound to make it to the Mall to witness history and now were slowly heading back.  We saw some of them sitting on small chairs in the 395 tunnels taking a rest before moving on again.
All was well until we got to Union Station. What is it with Union Station and security? We thought we would get something warm to drink and sit in there before we got our train. Come to find out all shops had been shut down there. Earlier on the morning train we had been told there would be restricted access to the station in the afternoon (I guess due to a ball being held there in the evening and security.) It was very confusing where to go to get in. We were sent around to an entry along the left side of the station which was fenced off. Either they were sweeping the station or there was a security issue, because suddenly all people were being sent back out of the station and I think they closed the Metro for a time. We were not allowed to enter and many people were backed up all over the streets, some with rolling luggage, who wanted to get in and not miss their train. So masses were sent out into a crowd who all wanted to go in.
No one was saying what was going on and people were getting angry. There was a policeman on top of a porta-potty gesturing to people , but you could not hear him. It was comical.  All it would have taken was a person in charge with a bull horn to say we have temporarily closed the station and just hold on a few more minutes, but no – nothing. Finally, they were allowing people in and it got scary when all throngs of people behind us were pushing forward. I was pushed into an orange barrel that I was lucky to get around.  Here is a quote from the Post and I think this happened when we were there. “”Firefighters were called for people who had fallen down among a crush of people at a security checkpoint near Union Station. “   There was no excuse for that. Again, a person with a bullhorn would have calmed the crowd and explained the situation.
Once we got inside the fence, there were about 15 Homeland security guys on each side of us and we had to run the gauntlet to get into the station. I wished I had taken pictures of that. No one checked our bags. Once inside there were great signs leading us to the MARC train and we were able to actually get on an earlier train and get home and see some of the parade. Other than almost getting trampled, it was a great day!!!!  MARC train did an excellent job!!!!!
You know things are special when you can get trampled and still call it a great day.
Related: Pictures from the We Are One concert, note about Pete Seeger’s This Land performance, and new link to the Seeger video in comments here.
Waldo Jaquith notes that Del. Mark Obenshain (R-Harrisonburg) is taking up the cause of criminalizing miscarriages in Virginia. Waldo also mentions that Del. Cosgrove tried this stunt in 2005. This was Cosgrove’s excuse that he put in an email to me:
“This bill, which was requested by the Chesapeake Police Department, is an attempt to reduce the number of “trashcan” babies that are born and then abandoned in trashcans, toilets, or elsewhere to die from exposure or worse. There are numerous examples of these tragic deaths in Virginia, many in Northern Virginia and also in Hampton Roads. Once the body of a child is found, if the death of that child is undetermined by a coroner, the person abandoning that child can only be charged with “the improper disposal of a human body”.
This was, of course, utter bullshit. Any bets on Obenshain trotting out the same line?
Vivian Paige sounds a sad note about the apparent lack of interest in marking the anniversary of the end of Virginia’s abominable strategy of state-sanctioned “massive resistance” to the end of segregation in public schools. It’s worth reading.
(And compare this to J.R. Hoeft’s call for the end of the celebration of [Robert E.] Lee- [Stonewall] Jackson Day in Virginia, and the incredible backlash his proposal has gotten from his (otherwise erstwhile) allies amongst the Republican VA blogs.)
If your flight through IAD is delayed this weekend, here’s where to direct your ire:
One of the four runways at Washington’s Dulles International Airport will be closed starting Friday to park private planes flown to D.C. for President-elect Obama’s inauguration.
Opened in November, the 9,400-foot runway will be closed from Friday, Jan. 16 through Thursday, Jan. 22 to accommodate what the Metropolitan Washington Airports Authority expects to be around 500 private planes flown in for the occasion.
This post should not be construed as evidence that I would do anything different, if I had my own plane . . .
I’m a big defender of the DC Metro system.  Sometimes I think it’s because I came from a city with a pathetic public transport system (hi, Atlanta!), and other times I think it’s because I can’t stand the sound of one more twit from New York talking about how great the system is back home. But mostly I defend it because it’s a system that does a pretty good job – given its resources – of serving as circulation system for DC and its surrounding communities. They’ve got a really difficult funding situation, though – they essentially have to go begging four masters on a regular basis (the Fed, DC, MD, and VA gov’ts) and suffer all the risks and political vagaries that go with that. So, when faced with the rare chance to put their hands on some serious capital project spending power? They flub it:
Unfortunately, when WMATA sat down to talk about what kind of projects they had that fit the criteria for economic stimulus, they only came up with $529 million worth of stuff. That’s better than being dishonest and trying to get their hands on billions of dollars worth of money to go waste.
But it also reflects a failure of vision, planning, and leadership. A well-run agency ought not become so cowed by the narrow horizons of conventional political wisdom that it’s left with this little to ask for when the situation changes.
Oh, I could think of something . . .
Yup, Rep. Jim Moran (D-Va) is quote as having said that today, about the Fortress DC Lockdown the Secret Service seems to be planning.  Closing all of the bridges from Virginia to DC is bad enough, but making pedestrians prove that they have a right to be in their own neighborhoods? Yeah, I think we might be approaching insane.
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